Written & Read by: Rob Bell
Background: First of all let me warn you, this may be a longer post. I'm going to take a couple days and work on this one, instead of writing it inside the space of 20 minutes. Also, I’d like to note that I have never met Rob Bell. I have been to his Church in Grandville, MI called Mars Hill Bible Church a few times. The only staff Pastor I’ve had any interaction with was Matt Krik, who helped start Mars Hill with Rob in 1999. Other than visiting there, my interaction and experience with Rob and other speakers at MHBC has been thru Rob’s books, two of his speaking tours and the weekly sermons available for download at Marshill.org.
A bit of history on me:
I grew up a Pastor's kid, and not just any Pastor's Kid, but a Pentecostal Pastor's Kid. PK's everywhere see and learn a lot of things about life and people that I believe most other kids just don't experience when growing up. There can be good and bad in this. On the good side, you're always first in the food lines at Weddings! On the bad side, it's not uncommon for a PK to grow up, and completely rebel against everything their Pastor parent stands for. Even going as far as completely disconnecting from the family. For the record, I don't think I ever rebelled. I was the youngest of 4 boys, and generally lived a low maintenance childhood and teenage years. Being the youngest afforded me the opportunity to travel around the country with my parents once Dad felt called to be an Evangelist instead of just Pastoring one church. Visiting all these churches all around the country I learned a lot about this thing we call "The Church", and Church Business. It really is a business in a lot of ways. Among the saddest things I witnessed were a shocking amount of Churches being led by men who have no leadership skills and are almost incapable of fulfilling the basic role of a Pastor. In other cases there were also many Churches where the Church leadership is completely held under the thumb of a wealthy family in the Church. More often than not, God was clearly not in charge of His Church. People were turning it into a social club or a woe is me club or a give more money so we can build a nicer building club.
Finally I finished High School and moved to the Madison, WI area. My original motivation for moving was to help my former Youth Pastor at my church in Waupaca, WI start up a new Church in Madison. For the first 3 maybe 4 years of the Church I never missed a Sunday. I was the Tech guy, and handled everything Technical on Sunday mornings. This was hard work because during those years we were meeting in a movie theater. Which required us to arrive 3 hours before service to setup, and tear down everything before the afternoon movies started showing. On more than one occasion we were putting things away while the previews were running. It was a lot of work, but I really felt like I was serving God in a useful way. The church struggled to attract and retain people though, in the theater days we never really grew much over 30 or 40 people. This has been the story for many Startup Churches in Dane County Wisconsin. It’s been labeled one of the hardest to evangelize locations in Wisconsin, if not the Midwest.
Having done a tour of Churches across the country I felt fairly confident that I knew what it would take to make a Church a success. I would probably say that this gave me a certain air of "know-it-all-ism", and that I've heard everything. The Church we were starting was modeled after a Church in Barrington, IL called "Willow Creek". Willow's Pastor Bill Hybels pioneered the idea of a "Seeker Sensitive" Sunday morning service. Essentially they would do Live Drama's , the band would play covers of popular radio songs that fit the theme of the week, and the sermons' or "message's" would be practical in nature. Message's were usually about things like how to raise happy kids, and how to have a satisfying Marriage, or how to be happy at your job. For any in depth bible study you had to join a Small Bible Study Group, or attend a Mid Week Church service. The formula worked for Willow for many years, they were one of the largest Evangelical Churches in North America, and still are. In recent years though, Willow did a survey of their members. They discovered in this that a large portion of their membership of the Church did NOT believe in certain foundational principles of Christianity. I haven’t been to Willow in a number of years, but I have read that they are slowly abandoning their “Seeker” method and doing more Bible Study on Sundays. I think this is excellent by the way.
I really did enjoy serving the Church in those early years. And I am grateful for the friendships and relationships that came out of that time in my life. I still have many life long friends that I met because of being involved with this Church. And it's the Church my wife and I still attend today. I count my Pastor among one of my greatest friends, and even though we tend to disagree on some things more than maybe we did in the past, my relationship with him is one I hope to maintain the rest of my days. Love ya Mick.
Once I met the girl who would become my wife, I started to realize that maybe I didn't know it all. As shocking as that was. And that maybe there should be more to following Christ than just falling asleep in the Sound Booth every Sunday. As my pastor kept reminding me, I needed to have some kind of devotional life (prayer and studying of God’s Word). I knew I needed to find someone to help me dig my faith into something solid. Something that was real , and a different voice to listen to. What I really needed was to actually figure out what I believed, and why I believed it. I honestly couldn’t tell you why I was a Christian at this point in my life. Except to say that it’s the only thing I’ve ever known. This is where Rob Bell comes in.
My first encounter with Rob was his Nooma Video called Noise. I knew I liked this guy, but had no idea who he was. It was late in 2003 that I found Mars Hill Bible Church's website, and downloaded my first sermon of Rob's. It would be the first of hundreds of messages that I would listen too from MHBC. Finally I had found someone who preached the Bible in a way that made actual sense to me. It wasn't just “this is what the Bible says, so just do it”. Rob actually taught me things about where the Bible came from, why the Old Testament is important and relevant. Rob also explains a lot of the Jewishness of the Bible, and how to the modern day reader we miss a lot of things simply because we’re not Jewish people living in the first century. Mostly he taught me that there's more to being a Christian than just managing my sins. This, was a big deal to me.
In his book "The Divine Conspiracy" Dallas Willard talks about how the Church has turned Jesus Gospel into "Gospel's of Sin Management". This is where the Church focuses almost completely on getting people to feel bad about their sin and repent, they forget about everything else Jesus taught. I think this is why Rob was such a breath of fresh air for me. Rob didn't get up every Sunday and make it his goal to guilt people into Heaven. Instead he focused on talking about who Jesus was, and what He did to serve people, and why it mattered. This combined with stories of people at MHBC and the things they were doing to show the world who Jesus was, really hit home for me. Finally it felt like I found a Church that actually was showing the world what it meant to truly follow Christ. I as I dived deeper into my faith, I found that by not focusing completely on my own sins and instead living to serve others, the sin problems I had sort of just fell away. It’s hard to explain, but I think this is why Rob isn’t a Hellfire and Brimstone preacher. He’s found and I agree, that if you as a Church just are constantly telling people what NOT to do, they worry so much about what they’re doing that nothing else gets done. It creates people with a stagnated faith that isn’t going anywhere. I would have been one of those people. Sure some people might thrive under a Church that is always correcting them, but I would say that is the exception and not the rule.
Instead I learned that by serving others, serving “the least of these” making my life about that, made life livable. Since I was living in the Grace God gave me, I was actually free to live.
Criticism:
Like any Megachurch Pastor, Rob’s success has opened the flood gates of Religious Critics. Just Google his name and you’ll be sure to find plenty of bloggers eager to call him a heretic, and ready to burn him at the stake. Rob has been lumped in with a group that has either been labeled or labeled themselves the “Emerging Church”. Personally Rob has never claimed membership to any Emerging Church organizations. But because he has friendships and guest speakers at his church like Brian McLaren (some people call him the Father of the Emerging Church) Chris Seay, Erwin McManus, Dr. Greg Boyd, Dr. Ray Vanderlaan, Shane Hipps (MHBC’s newest Teaching Pastor) , and Shane Claiborne among others. Rob’s grouping into the Emerging Church is implied.
Having listened to Rob and many of the guests that Mars Hill has brought in over the years, I honestly don’t know why he’s as big of a lightening rod as some people like to make him out to be. I do know that many of his critics love to take 30 second sound bytes of his sermons, and simply stretch something he says and take it in a complete 180 from where he was going if you listen to the whole thing. He will often bring up something just to make you think about it, he forces you to do your own research. He doesn’t just tell you what to believe, or “spoon feed” you. Some will do line by line critiques of his sermons, and because of his asking questions about normally off-topic items, it’s easy to make it look like Rob Bell is something other than he really is.
The biggest thing people love to complain about Rob is his stance on the Biblical Doctrine of Hell. Or as some would say, the lack thereof.
This is one of the main focuses of his latest book called “Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.” In this latest book , Rob’s position on Heaven and Hell has not changed since the day I first started listening to him. So a lot of this book to anyone who’s followed him at all won’t be anything new.
In his book Velvet Elvis and again in Love Wins, he lays this out in some detail, but in a sermon he gave in 2007 he detailed his thoughts on this even more. Basically Rob believes that Jesus talked a lot about Hell. But if you go back and look at the original source material for all modern translations of the Bible, each time Jesus is translated to use the word “Hell” he’s using one of a few variations on the word. And the word Jesus most often used is the word “gehenna”. Wikipedia’s Definition follows.
“Gehenna (Greek γέεννα), Gehinnom (Rabbinical Hebrew: גהנום, גהנם,) and Yiddish Gehinnam, are terms derived from a place outside ancient Jerusalem known in the Hebrew Bible as the Valley of the Son of Hinnom (Hebrew: גֵיא בֶן־הִנֹּם or גיא בן-הינום); one of the two principal valleys surrounding the Old City.In the Hebrew Bible, the site was initially where apostate Israelites and followers of various Ba'als and false gods, including Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire (2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6; Jer. 7:31, 19:2-6). In both Rabbinical Jewish and Early Christian writing, Gehenna was a destination of the wicked. This is different from the more neutral Sheol/Hades, the abode of the dead, though English Bibles traditionally translate both with the Anglo-Saxon concept Hell.”
So according to Rob, when Jesus says “Hell” he’s talking to the Jews of his time about the real physical place that all of them were familiar with. Rob never goes so far as to say that the classical understanding of Hell, that of the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels does not exist. He is often accused of that, but that is soundly untrue. Rob does however dodge that subject, and to my knowledge does not have a public or published statement on that doctrine. Rob’s non answer to this issue and others is what angers many of his critics. It seems that everyone just wants him to just take a side. It is however not his goal to create another systematic theology. Even in Love Wins, he doesn’t address the Lake of Fire which is the final destination of Satan and his Demons per the book of Revelation.
Here’s my thought on why Rob stays vague on many Theological concepts. First of all, unless you’re a Christian who’s been around the Church most of your life, you’re not going to even know what any of these things are. Today’s unbelievers just aren’t aware of doctrinal disputes. And I think they’re better for it. Today’s unbelievers are more focused on what kind of person Christianity makes you and less of what you believe in. Is this compromising the Gospel? Or just majoring on the majors that people care about today? In Love Wins, I think Rob makes an excellent point. Some Pastors who tell people that if someone died without knowing Jesus as their Savior that therefore that person is in Hell for all Eternity. Pastors that teach this, in some cases seem to lack tact. Even Jesus had more tact then to tell a gentile something like that. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus was strict and firm, but most of the time he was being strict was when he was teaching the Religious Leaders of the day an object lesson. I don’t believe you’re going to encourage ANYONE to follow God by telling them that they will be separated from their loved ones for all eternity unless they get their loved ones saved too. And if someone’s loved ones are already dead, then there is no hope.
Because we live in such a connected world it seems like a more tragic world than ever before. We know about disasters the moment they happen, we have statistics constantly thrown at us about starving kids. Then a family member gets diagnosed with cancer. It feels like never ending despair. This is why I think it’s critical that Christians today focus on the HOPE that Jesus is. People need to believe in hope, and if Christians today are too focused on dashing that hope by pronouncing eternal judgment on someone (which I thought was God’s job) , then the whole Church is going to suffer. That kind of damage can sometimes be irreparable.
Popularity:
Ok, here’s my real defense of why I think guys like Rob are being well accepted today. Studies are all over the place showing that Christianity in America is on the decline. Fewer people are attending church, and fewer people are accepting Christ in America. Churches are also getting more condensed. People are leaving small Churches and moving to Mega Churches that offer multiple service times with different music, and excellent coffee.
Why is this? I think there are two, maybe three reasons. Maybe more.
Reason #1:
The Internet Age
Right around the late 90’s the Internet age was really exploding in America. Broadband internet access was opening people up to more and more information. And suddenly for the first time ever, people could learn anything they wanted to, any time they wanted to, for the monthly cost of their Internet connection. They no longer had to go to a local church to hear about God, they could do it all online. People needed the local Church less and less for Spiritual wisdom, instead they were using it as just a local social club. And many Churches responded to this by teaching less about the Bible and more about everyday life. What I think the Church didn’t realize was also happening, was that as Christians were abandoning the local Church, non-believers online were also finding ways to share their bad experiences in local churches. Around the late 90’s I found a website created by a former Christian, called ExChristian. The guy who started it, had several really bad experiences with really bad Pastors in several Churches. He got a lot of bad advice, and honestly I couldn’t blame him for losing his faith. At the time, I worked in Internet Support so I literally spent all day every day on the internet, and site after site, day after day, I found person after person who was losing their faith. The more the internet seemed to spread, the more the Church just didn’t seem to pay attention to it. Because of all this free and accessible information about Christianity was online it made it even easier for people to start questioning it. More and more people were asking questions about Christianity, and more and more the Church couldn’t seem to come up with answers. The people I was encountering just were not buying the whole line of “ the Bible says it so it must be true” anymore. People needed hard and fast evidence. And the Church as I knew it was not providing it.
Reason #2.
September 11th, 2001.
Shortly on the heels of the Internet revolution was the events of 9/11. I was at work at the Internet Help Desk that day, and every single call I took I could hear TV’s on in the background with news reports. Everyone was in shock.
It was a tragic day, one that I won’t forget. But how did it affect the Church? I think the events itself may not have directly affected Christianity, but how the media and others responded certainly did. I think what happened in short is, someone put the idea out there that, this act of Terrorism was done by Religious Fundamentalists, and if Islamic Fundamentalist’s were capable of this , then what were Christians capable of? Christians certainly didn’t help things by keeping up the whole “War Metaphor” rhetoric. And the Rev. Jerry Falwel claiming that the reason God let it happen in the first place was God allowing judgement on America for Homosexual activity. Which was crazy for him to say.
9/11 was a turning point in many regards. The events of that day have been used as the excuses for two wars, and for turning American Civil liberties over in the name of security. I will admit, that before 9/11 I had no idea how the Muslim faith was any different than Christianity. I just new from my growing up as a PK that since it wasn’t based on the Bible, therefore it was a false religion and should be ignored. I knew more about Mormonism and the Jehovahs Witnesses, than Islam.
The world has gone through some major changes, faster than ever before. I think even from a technology perspective our development has far outpaced what it has ever been. We’re doing everything faster. Including turning people away from Christ.
Because of this, it’s difficult to meet someone who doesn’t already have an opinion formed about Jesus or Christianity. They’ve either tried it once already and gave up, or they know someone who was abused by it, or worse they’ve been abused by it themselves.
Reason #3
The Magic Sales Pitch
I would argue that the solution presented by Church professionals over the last 10 to 20 years has been, “The Church in America needs better Marketing”. Somewhere along the line we stopped talking about Jesus & the Bible, and instead focused on getting people to agree with or disagree with 5 or 6 spiritual principles based on Bible verses. And somehow if you agreed with these, then in infomercial speak “Today Only” you too can be saved. Instead of having an encounter with the Living Christ, and being transformed by Him, we turned Jesus into a Product with a sales pitch.
“Have you filled your life with the hollow things of Sex, and Drugs, and Money? Have these things left you empty and unfulfilled? Try Jesus! He’ll fill the circle shaped hole in your heart and make you truly satisfied and happy.” It’s like reading the script from a Saturday Morning TV Infomercial isn’t it? And if anyone has ever bought anything from an Infomercial, 9 times out of 10 the product is being sold on TV because no one in their right mind would ever buy the item unless it was pitched this way. So why have we done this to Jesus. Why have we turned the Savior of the World into a Magic Bullet? It’s no wonder people have tried Jesus and given up. They were sold something that didn’t work.
This is why I think Rob is appealing to the size of audience he’s reaching today. He’s not following the trend of turning Jesus into a Multi-Level-Marketing product. Instead he’s explaining to people who Jesus is, and why Jesus calls us to care about the poor, the slave, and the guy in prison. In my view he is selling a version of Jesus that more closely matches the Jesus we read about in the Bible.
Reason #4
Caring for the Earth
For Rob, and many other teachers today Heaven isn’t about escaping this world to go to a better place. Or “Evacuation Theology” as he terms it. It’s about doing the Lord’s Prayer, and helping to make things “on earth as it is in Heaven”. Bishop N.T. Wright says it this way “Heaven is important but it’s not the end of the world”. In the end of time as we know it, Rob believes that God will not ultimately completely destroy the Earth and make a new one. Again, our modern translations of the English Bible have missed something. The term used in Revelations of a “New Heaven, and New Earth”, is not talking about a Brand New Heaven and a Brand New Earth, rather it’s really saying that God is going to Restore the Earth to what it once was. And once the Earth is Remade in this way, then the City of Heaven will crash into Earth and the two will be one. And God’s dwelling will be among His people.
For my whole life I had always been told that the reason we need to get as many people saved as possible before the Rapture happens, is because God is going to destroy this world completely. Crush it like a piece of paper and throw it away. Then start with a clean one. This is not how original manuscript copies of the New Testament describe it according to Rob and Theologians like N.T. Wright. In their view, God would not destroy something that He has called good. I must admit that after considering both sides of this, I have to agree with Rob. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. If God’s just going to destroy everything, then why would He bother waiting at all? Why didn’t he ignore Moses’ pleading and just wipe out the nation of Israel like He wanted too? Why let time go on for so long, and let the fates of Billions upon Billions of people hang in the balance? It just doesn’t seem to fit.
What Rob points out though, and I completely agree with is this. People who’ve grown up believing that God is going to crush this world eventually anyways tend to not really care much about this place that they call home. I know I used to be one of them. There is a song by a really bad 80’s Christian Punk Rock band called One Bad Pig, the title was “Ice Cream Sunday” (I think?) the line in the chorus went something like this, “The world is like an Ice Cream Sunday, it’s all gonna melt one day”. Suffice it to say this sums up a lot of Christians views on taking care of the planet. They ignore all the stories in the Bible about being good stewards with the resources God has given us. Instead those stories are taught that we should steward our money and talents, not the planet we live on. Pile this on with the many other reasons of why many people do not believe in Christianity today.
Conclusion:
So am I a “Rob Bell fanboy”? I guess you could say that. But I don’t automatically agree with everything the man says just because he said it. I think he’s a gifted creative communicator. He’s an artist at heart, and artists are usually misunderstood by the general public.
I think if he really was such a terrible influence on people, Pastors like Ed Dobson, Jeff Manion, John Ortberg, Richard Mouw (the President of Rob’s Seminary), among others would not speak at MHBC and thereby not support him.
I think the most disappointing thing with the release of Love Wins, is that Zondervan felt it didn’t matchup with their mission statement. This is why Rob went to Harper One. I really don’t think it was a book that was completely at odds with their mission. I think they just wanted to protect their image, since they hold the Copyrights to the NIV Bible.
I don’t believe that he’s a “Universalist” and he himself has denied this accusation. I don’t think he is hurting the Church or Christianity. I think both of those entities do a good enough job hurting themselves because they’re both made up of imperfect people.
I think that his second book “Sex God”, is his best work yet. And the chapter on lust is probably one of the best chapters ever written on the topic by anyone. And I applaud MHBC for being the single Church in America to take the guys from xxxchurch.com under it’s wing and help them spread the message of how the Adult Entertainment industry is destroying this country.
So that’s it. That’s my story, part of it at least. I think I could’ve gone on writing this for months. I’m sorry for the sloppiness. I’m no professional writer. I’m just a guy, with a commute that listens to books, and has a blog.
P.S. I enjoy that Rob reads all his books in Audio format. Again, I think you get so much more out of a book when the Author reads it to you.
-B
Sex God
Jesus Wants to Save Christians
Just read this now. Very well said.
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